Girl’s Detour to Baghdad About to End

Ten-year-old Penelope Nabokov, the youngest of the Americans held against their will in Iraq, has been released to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the State Department said Wednesday.

Nabokov, a resident of the Bay Area town of Albany, had been flying alone from France, where her grandmother lives, to India to join her mother when she and her fellow passengers on a British Airways plane were caught during a refueling stop by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait last Thursday.

Reached earlier in the day, Penelope’s father, Peter Nabokov, showed strain in his voice as he withheld comment. “I’m not talking to anybody until Penny is out of there and safe,” he said.

The child was one of 39 Americans who have been held in Baghdad’s Hotel Rashid. The group includes 11 oil workers taken from oil fields near the Kuwait-Iraq border early in the invasion, 25 Americans taken from Kuwait by the Iraqi army by bus on Monday and three Americans who were in Baghdad before the invasion.

U.S. consular officers were allowed to visit the hotel Wednesday and confirmed that all 39 were safe and in apparent good health, State Department officials said.

“Their status is that they cannot leave the hotel grounds, but they have full use of the facility. There are armed guards located at the hotel, but the Americans have not been threatened,” State Department deputy spokesman Richard Boucher said.